Thomas Cole, A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White
Mountains (CrawfordNotch), 1839

n

Crawford
Notch--the landscape and conception of sublime here has more meaning: In
August, 1826, an avalanche at Crawford Notch took the lives of the Willey
Family, nine in all.Crawford Notch,
in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, was a well-known scenic site and
Cole’s audience would have known of this tragedy.

Hawthorne’s“The Ambitious Guest” (1837) is a story
about the tragedy

Sense of
ominousness with the storm coming on: scale dwarfs humanity

Crawford
Notch--the landscape and conception of sublime here has more meaning:

Ancient gnarled
tree--device used by Cole to underscore age of America's wilderness